Tax hikes? How about paring the Legislature? Guest Column

By Brian O'Neill, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Gov. Ed Rendell's campaign to raise the state income tax should be no more popular or successful than Walter Mondale's pledge to raise federal taxes in 1984.

Mr. Mondale got creamed in his bid to unseat President Ronald Reagan (who continued to blithely run up the national credit card). Mr. Rendell is going to lose this argument, too, as he should.

Because there is no way America's Largest Full-Time State Legislature can justify even a small increase in taxes until it pares its own budget.

Senate Republicans will prevail in blocking this tax increase (which would run about $5 a week for a person earning $50,000 a year). But before they impose the only alternative, massive cuts in education and elsewhere, legislators need to share more of the pain they're about to dish out.

The Republican-dominated state Senate passed a bill last month that would cut legislative appropriations by more than 10 percent from current levels (from $332.2 million to $293 million), but that isn't nearly enough. With 253 legislators, that still works out to $1.16 million per legislator. That's an unfathomable expense just to keep the chambers running.

Senate Republican spokesman Erik Arneson pointed to the proposed 10 percent cut and also to a 9 percent cut in number of staffers in the Republican caucus since January 2006 -- about 40 positions. But when 40 jobs represent just 9 percent of the total, that only reminds us that our Legislature has the most staffers of any statehouse in the republic. There were roughly 3,000 helpers at last count.

Legislative expenses should be cut by at least 20 percent, as some area lawmakers from both parties have suggested.

"I understand your point," Mr. Arneson wrote at the end of our e-mail exchange. "Given the way revenues have continued to plummet, it is absolutely fair to expect us to look at cutting the legislature further if we reach agreement to adopt a no-tax-increase budget that makes the other cuts included in Senate Bill 850 [which proposes the 10 percent cut]."

That would be wisdom were it not for the "if." There should be no ''if." Slashing the legislative budget should be dependent on nothing else. It's imperative.

Every few years, the Pennsylvania citizenry wakes up to what is happening in Harrisburg. The unconstitutional mid-term pay grab in the summer of 2005 was one such moment, and this idea of raising taxes during a recession is another.

It's true that the Legislature cannot balance the budget simply by lopping itself. The savings would be in the tens of millions of dollars, and the budget deficit is estimated at $3.2 billion. That doesn't matter. This is about sharing the pain.

There would be any number of places to begin. Lawmaking is not a physically demanding job like, say, firefighting or mining. Its demands are mental. Trying to justify yet another day in Harrisburg to snarf up the $158 per diem can tax the brain. So here's one quick savings idea: Let's call one $158 meeting to discuss eliminating the right of retired lawmakers to begin receiving a full pension at age 50.

That's at least 10 years too young, and we'd have more healthy turnover in the statehouse if there were no legislative pension. Put the lawmakers on a 401(k). One day soon they will have to deal with ticking pension time bomb for state workers, and they'll need to make their own sacrifices first.

Then there is, of course, the size of the Legislature itself. We have 253 lawmakers. Comparable states, Ohio and Illinois, get by with 132 and 177.

The Pennsylvania Constitution allows no voters' initiative to get a referendum on the ballot, and reducing the Legislature's size requires a constitutional change. But all downsizing proposals have sputtered in Harrisburg largely because the lawmakers have no reason to believe they'll be voted out if they don't reform now.

This "temporary" tax increase, which Gov. Rendell says would last three years, provides the opening for the tedious process of changing the constitution. Call your state senator and representative and offer this simple advice: "Tax me? Cut you."

That probably won't work, but it would be good for one's soul.